The Time Is Now for the DOD to Expedite Action on Biosurveillance

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has struggled for years to unify its biosurveillance capabilities, achieving some progress but still falling short. It can fix that vulnerability through sustained, high-level leadership and a concrete, practical action plan to integrate and modernize its assets. These priority steps would improve the readiness of U.S. forces, the capability to detect and respond to biothreats, and the ability to protect Americans. Time, however, is precious, and delays are costly.

Beginning early in the Covid-19 crisis, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley reportedly asked for rapid, unified DOD assessments of the evolving threat the virus posed to U.S. national interest that would be practical and easy to use. He sought analyses that spanned the DOD’s diverse assets and included insights into decisions made by its strategic adversaries, most notably China, which was suspected of destroying and concealing evidence of Covid-19’s origins and potentially running an active bioweapons program. He was also looking for reliable means to combat pervasive disinformation and misinformation surrounding the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the DOD’s biodefense partnerships. 

At the strategic level, the case for taking biosurveillance very seriously was increasingly heard loudly and forcefully during the Covid-19 crisis. The revised National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan each significantly elevated biological threats as a national security priority. At least three major factors have driven this shift, which has been widely acknowledged across the administration and on a bipartisan basis in Congress: 

• The recognition that the common features of biological threats—whether naturally occurring, accidental, or intentional—argue that they should be surveilled and understood together, holistically, versus in separate stovepipes.
• The recognition that the rapid evolution of synthetic biology and artificial intelligence (AI), with the high potential for malevolent misuse, means that the bioeconomy and control over genomic data have become suffused with national security concerns.
• The recognition that biodefense now sits conspicuously at the center of the escalating geopolitical confrontation with China.

Success in the short term in meeting the chairman’s request, however, has proved elusive. 

DOD Capabilities Are Extensive—and Stovepiped

The DOD has exceptional biodefense capabilities—most notably, its nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs; the Defense Threat Reduction Agency; the Defense Health Agency; and its extensive clinical medicine, public health, and worldwide infectious disease research laboratories and partnerships. 

But the reality is that these assets are siloed, creating fragmentation within the DOD. Integration does not come easily, naturally, or quickly.

The revelation in 2020-2021 that quick forward movement was not possible exposed a national security vulnerability: the inability to provide the chairman with a real-time, unified, easy-to-use, and actionable picture of the biological threat environment put the United States at risk of not seeing an emergent threat at all or failing to understand the threat in a timely and complete fashion to enable an informed response.

That discovery triggered corrective steps that aimed to upgrade the internal working of the DOD’s biodefense, including an integration of DOD biosurveillance data. In 2021 Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin released a biodefense vision memorandum emphasizing the importance of addressing biothreats of all types and directing a Biodefense Posture Review (BPR) that would unify and optimize all DOD biodefense capabilities, both within the DOD and with other federal departments. The BPR report, released in 2023, resulted in the creation of the DOD Biodefense Council, reporting to the deputy secretary of defense. The council is intended to represent all of the disparate biodefense, biosecurity, and health capabilities within the department, with a mandate to implement Secretary Austin’s vision memorandum.

Progress Is Positive, but Slow

In 2023 and 2024, some early gains have been achieved, but much work remains. 

In the course of the DOD moving forward, it has become clear just how difficult and complicated it is to deliver quick results. Several vexing barriers persist. 

The urgency to act has diminished, as biological threats are inevitably fading from policymakers’ desks in the post-Covid era. Geopolitical wars in Ukraine and the Middle East dominate attention and budgets. While new seed funding of over $800 million has been committed to implement the BPR, that is just a start, and does not fix the deep structural budgetary vulnerabilities of the DOD’s clinical care and research enterprises. There are real security concerns that come with sharing data, as existing systems are simply not often built to share, and special care is needed to ensure that sensitive data is protected. Reorganization to consolidate DOD labs has been instituted in hopes of greater efficiencies and savings yet has not necessarily resulted in more comprehensive biosurveillance.

However, the urgency of the threat persists. The advance of AI and biotechnology is rapidly changing the biothreat risk landscape. The DOD’s communications capabilities, forged in the pre-digital era, fall short of what is required to effectively rebut the pervasive falsehoods and conspiracy thinking of the digital era. 

Where to Go from Here? 

First, Americans need to be reminded—again—how vital it is not to repeat the cycle of crisis followed by complacency in the face of biological threats. One stark lesson of the Covid-19 pandemic is that uncoordinated efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats cost lives, significantly impact force readiness, and create insecurities for Americans.

Second, DOD leadership needs to acknowledge—again—that delays will only increase the temptation within the DOD to revert to familiar, preexisting silos that make the country less safe.

Third, as the United States approaches its national elections this fall, the DOD leadership should redouble its efforts to have demonstrable proof by the end of 2024 that the integration of biosurveillance data is indeed feasible and has begun to deliver concrete results. 

Progress is likely to be incremental and require a long-term effort—well beyond 2024—that rests on sustained high-level leadership. DOD leaders need to insist upon continued progress, regardless of the outcome of presidential and congressional elections, and that bipartisan support be preserved. 

As 2025 unfolds, the DOD should put a new biosurveillance approach into force that will be faster, more comprehensive, and higher quality in protecting U.S. national security and American lives. To get there, the DOD will need a long-term plan for data integration, with concrete budgetary and staffing goals, intermediate milestones, and a framework for measuring progress.

The Biodefense Council, a promising recent initiative, is vested with leading this enterprise and has an opportunity to truly strengthen U.S. national security. The time for the DOD to expedite action is now. Time is precious, and delays are costly.

Thomas R. Cullison is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. J. Stephen Morrison is senior vice president and director of the Global Health Policy Center at CSIS. The authors are very grateful to Michaela Simoneau, associate fellow in the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, for her extensive support.